Evocative river

ROGER WILLIAMS

                                    Eternity, O Eternity!  That is our business.

Evocative river, measuring

my time.  If I follow

upstream, to the shallow

infant burble of your beginning

– that rush of spring across bright

limestone, agate, flint –

I might catch a glint

of prism-diamond, rainbow sunlight

out of the meteor from whence

we flew.  I studied greatness

as a bookworm boy; was

wowed by those Prince Valiants

& Teddy Heroes who prevail

(magnanimous & brave)

in moldy Grendel-cave

& gory field (at bookshelf scale);

but not until childhood had passed

did someone jump from stone

canoe, whose doings shone

so implicate with goodness (massed

coordinate with commonweal)

as to rekindle in my mind

each uncreated end

within this flow, earthbound & actual –

as in an icon of the central soul.

Heart-pivot of earth-

planet – integral hearth –

blazing spark in a great oak-bole

                       *

of clay spheres darting from the fiery

kiln (original

Joie, ineffable).

Star of perfection (seal of history).

Heroes in graven books (sustained

by hungry scrivener-ravens).

Yet the remotest heaven’s

slope will be surveyed, garnered, gleaned

by unknown compadres (anonymous,

unheralded).  Servants

beyond themselves – tense

strings, bowed into major chords.

Two things of opposite nature seem

to depend on one another...

the bond of troth, of lover

& belov’d.  Roger’s granite door-beam

on the hillside sinks back into dusky

Rhodus billows.  Nigh

the steadfast stream, two shy

ephebes lay out a picnic blanky;

an early butterfly, black-gold,

skims toward the shore. 

You have hearkened to lore

of skalds who came before – old

poets’ conversation, overheard;

now the river moves

in your own heart – Love’s

glittering pulse, encouraging word.

3.29.16